Julie talked about how much she liked going to church, so I asked her what kind of morals the church taught. She didn’t understand the question so I tried again.
‘What is it right in life to do?’ I said, the boring adult with too much wine in her.
‘Don’t run in school,’ she answered firmly.
Finally the moment arrived for the grand entrance of the turkey. It was trumpeted by an advance party of potatoes and vegetables and then Ron, the man of the family, went to collect the bird. There was silence at the table as we waited in anticipation for the symbolic bird to appear. When it did, it came flying through the doorway in a manner that suggested Ron had taken up levitating the dead with a remarkable degree of success. The bird, fed up with its confinement in the oven, had made one last flight of freedom off the plate and on to the floor. It wasn’t quite Rockwell, but we ate it anyway.
The next morning, riding on the crest of a wave of gratitude, we all packed into the family people mover to head off for church. I think it would be fair to say that everyone had slightly forgotten the spirit of the season. Richard was irritable because he hates religion. Rita was irritable because we were waiting for Ron. Ron was irritable because he couldn’t find what he was looking for. He called from the house.
‘Rita, do we have a Bible?’
‘I don’t think so,’ she yelled. He disappeared for a moment and then returned.
‘Can you get the Bible on line?’
‘Try King plus James,’ shouted Richard.
‘Does he have to have a Bible?’ I asked.
‘He’s teaching Bible study today,’ replied Rita.
This struck me as a stretch for a man who doesn’t even own a Bible but I had not yet been to the church. Their church, it turned out, was rather a relaxed place. The sort of place where owning a Bible wasn’t at all necessary for joining the club. The first thing I saw when I entered the Universalist Unitarian Church of Westchester was a large diagram pinned to a board. Here each member of the congregation had been asked to place an arrow to indicate the extent to which they did or did not believe in God. I was heartened to see that the minister himself, a youngish fellow with a grey moustache and dog collar, had firmly plumped for the No category. I asked Rita’s younger son, Paul, what it meant.
‘If you don’t believe in God then you don’t believe in God. That’s fine.’
I’m not religious but I liked this church. Everyone was very cheerful and huggy and wore a name tag with a pink triangle on it. This was something of a surprise. The pink triangle was the symbol gay people were made to wear by the Nazis in the concentration camps. It has become a badge of pride for the gay community. I didn’t think it was possible that everyone in the congregation apart from Rita and Ron’s family could be gay. Paul was a little shakier on this.
‘The pink triangle is the symbol for patience and the rainbow …‘ He frowned. He knew it was important but couldn’t think why. ‘I think the rainbow is the symbol for love.’
Leaflets describing the church as ‘A Religious Home for Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian and Transgender People’ were everywhere. In fact, I think Richard and I caused a bit of a stir. I’m not at all sure we weren’t the first actual gay people on the premises — even if Richard refused to do anything except stand in the car park and smoke. I headed off for Bible study class with Ron. There was a small group of kids all sitting in a circle.
‘We need another chair,’ said Ron. I stood, waiting to be seated. No child moved. Ron went and got another chair, placed it carefully and sat on it. I stood for a moment and then got my own chair. I decided it wasn’t about manners. It was just a difference in formality. You may have to fend for yourself in America but you do also get the credit for your achievements. The English endlessly stand on ceremony, pretending to be self-effacing, and then are surprised when they are left behind in the dust. I just wish there was some compromise between the two extremes. I had manners drummed into me at my English school and I suspect they will be the death of me. I will be standing on the prow of a sinking ship saying to everyone else on board, ‘No, please, after you.’
I was worried that I would know nothing in the Bible class but it turned out to be about Adam and Eve, which was good, I thought. Like staffing right at the beginning of a soap opera and not having to catch up.
The kids told me that ‘The story of Adam and Eve is about making choices and pressure.’ It made the whole thing sound like a modern business allegory.
Rita and Ron are heavily involved in the church. They help with the classes and take an active part in ‘structuring programs’ for their kids.
‘What do you do just for you?’ I asked my old friend and she looked somewhat flummoxed.
‘This is not the year just for me,’ she replied but I wonder when that year will be. I also wondered what had happened in the last thirty years. The woman who had wanted to shake the stand-up world had been sucked back into the life her parents led. Perhaps there is such a pull from the collective vacuums employed by the suburban housewife that it is not possible to escape. Or perhaps it is simply that people are, in general, destined to follow in their family’s footsteps: it is hard to break away. Rita has followed her parents’ life and I, in pursuing a life of writing and travel, have followed mine.
Although I think they would hate the idea, I realised Rita and Ron represented a kind of Mr and Mrs America to me. Living the suburban dream in which adult life is put on hold until the children are on their way to adulthood. It is admirable and is how life has progressed for centuries. Each succeeding generation helping the next to do slightly better than themselves. Rita’s father mowed his own lawn, now she has someone to do it for her. So what happens if your own kids grow up, have children, put life on hold and on and on … ?
When I was a kid growing up in the sixties, the women’s movement was very much in its infancy. Certainly it had no impact in the quiet, safe streets of the small towns of Westchester. I watched my parents’ friends interact and I saw the women doing the work at home and the men going off and having the fun. I may not have wanted to go off and save endangered wildlife but even then I knew I wanted to save myself. Of course, Rita also works but I suspect she does so because she has to.
‘Don’t you need something just for you?’ I persisted.
She shrugged. ‘I do need that but you can’t ever have everything. You do get things back from the kids in ways you don’t always expect.’
When the kids are grown up Ron and Rita plan to ‘move back to the city’. Ron is quite clear that he much prefers ‘… cement, none of this gardening stuff — the theatre, the energy, the museums … this is great now, this is exactly what we want now … once we get the kids established then our dream is to own a nicer apartment in the city.’
‘We won’t have cats though.’ Rita recalled how much I hated their cats but the decision is not for my benefit. ‘Ron was always having an allergy situation with them.’
An allergy situation? Is that a medical term?
Pay attention to the things that are critical in your life.
Play with your children.
Take time to get medical checkups.
Take your partner out dancing.
There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and fix the disposal.
Email from Julie
I’m not sure why Julie sent me this email. She sends me lots of things with little aphorisms and guidances in them. I don’t send any back because I don’t know where you get them and I couldn’t possibly think of any. I am too busy wondering why I don’t have a ‘disposal’ to fix in the first place. I also can’t think why a nine-year-old girl would think taking time for medical checkups was an important message to pass on. I realise that the things Rita highlights for her kids as significant and the things I choose for mine are poles apart. My son, who is eight, has little sayings but they are almost all attributed to cute woodland creatures or Bart Simpson.
CHAPTER 4<
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Cathy — Gladys Three
Despite having grown up in the States, I had already come across things on this trip that I didn’t understand. Richard and I went to a drive-in ATM bank machine in Westchester which had Braille on the numbers. How many blind people would use such a facility? Cathy was our next Gladys on the list, mainly because she lived practically round the corner from Rita. She lived round the corner but they didn’t see each other. I thought there had to be something in that. Cathy had the distinction of being the only Gladys I ever attended a class with. Actually going to lessons was not my strong point in high school but Cathy and I did do social studies together. Cathy was two years older than me so I have no idea how that came about. Maybe they thought I would know more about life and society because I originally came from Europe. At any rate I think there was something about the topic which attracted a certain kind of teacher. I hadn’t had much luck with social studies teachers. The first one had had a personal crisis and now I had to deal with what I felt were the poor communication skills of my new teacher. It is hard to imagine how she had ever come to the conclusion that teaching was a good idea. As far as I could see she had no skills of command whatsoever. What she did have were very wide glasses that flipped up into little wings at the side and an astonishing obsession with vowel sounds. Her accent was extreme New York.
‘Seeeew, we aaare lookin’ at Whirl Whor Won and Whirl Whor Two.’
Not only did she have a unique interpretation of historical facts but it was a skill to refer to the two world wars as if they contained no consonants whatsoever. No one was interested in either of the world wars, however badly they were pronounced. Most of the sophomore class were looking at what was going on outside the window. The teacher went on alone to expound her theories that America had saved the world on most occasions thanks to sheer will-power and the Hershey chocolate bar and how grateful the Europeans ought to be. I tried to be grateful but it was difficult to follow.
‘Whirl Whor Won and Whirl Whor Too was in Yarrup and if duh Americans hadn’t come duh Jurmans woulda won.’
It was like taking lessons from a John Wayne movie. Until recently I thought the notion of Europe as ‘Yarrup’ was unique to her, but it is now listed in the Oxford English Dictionary as the correct spelling for the American pronunciation of Europe. Perhaps she was just ahead of her time.
Despite my ancestors’ own narrow escape from the German boot, my mind drifted off. Cathy would sit next to me and pass me notes. I remember there were a lot of notes in the spring of ‘72 because she was splitting up with her boyfriend Mike. I was sympathetic but hopeless. I knew nothing of dating, less about kissing and absolutely zero about sex. All the other Gladyses were older than me so almost everyone was dating. Everyone, I think, except Sue who liked to watch TV with me. Even her older sister, Anne (who would come to learn that boys were not her preferred option), had a boyfriend called Jimmy. Jimmy was kind of a geek and had very bad acne. I couldn’t imagine wanting to get close to that at all. Rita talked about boys all the time, everyone wanted to go out with Ginger and certainly Cathy had no problem getting boyfriends. She was beautiful, with long, sleek golden brown hair, similar golden brown skin and a great waistline. She looked more like a Californian than a native New Yorker. She and Mike, who was very tall, had been going out for some time. Their breaking up was only important to me in that it might affect the casting for the musical. Both Mike and Cathy would audition and Regina would want them both to get in but if they broke up it might be tricky and …
Cathy and I would go to social studies, pay no attention at all and then rush from the room to be picked up by Anne (Gladys Six) in her Ford Pinto. By then the car would already be full of Gladyses and Cathy and I would have to ride in the hatch at the back. We were the youngest. It was what we deserved.
Richard and I had been invited to Cathy’s for lunch at a quite specific hour so there was a bit of time to kill. I dragged Richard out to show him the haunts of my past. We drove along the shore to Mamaroneck, the town where I had once belonged. The south-easterly shore of Westchester County and the Bronx is indented with bays and estuaries of which Mamaroneck is one of the largest. It is an ancient place. As kids we used to catch horseshoe crabs in the harbour. Huge armour-plated black creatures with a spear a foot long sticking out of the front. One of the few species of animal and sea life that look exactly the same as they did in the period when dinosaurs lived. Still there, helping to clean the waters of Long Island Sound.
Thirty years later, everything was pretty much how I remembered it. Even all the old houses where I used to live. Six Wildwood Drive, where my sister had first come home as a baby. The Coulters’ house opposite, where Mr Coulter, a local clothing store owner, had persuaded Dad in 1968 that coloured shirts were no longer effeminate. Ten Brookside Drive, where Lori (Gladys Ten) had once driven into the hedge while coming to collect me.
Five Seventy, Shore Acres Drive, Where we had first settled in, pilgrim style, on the shores of the local waters. Here we had lived next to a retired couple known to everyone as Dearest and Uncle Frank. Next to them were Aunt Evie and Uncle Walt and their children Margie, Robin and Brucie. Everyone was your aunt and uncle. All the neighbourhood kids were awash with relations who kept an eye on you, yelled at you and bought ice-creams from the Good Humour Man who came round in his white truck wearing a peaked cap and black bow tie.
‘This is the first house we lived in except it’s brown now and it used to be green … and this is the house we lived in when my sister was born … my brother wanted Jeni to be a boy and when he was told about her he said, “Rats! I’m outnumbered.”
‘… and this is the harbour where I learned to swim and a boy died swimming under the docks and there used to be a great fourth of July party …‘ and on and on.
Historically, it was an interesting time. Vietnam was proving to be an American nightmare, civil rights protestors continually took to the streets and, even at the time, I had an opinion on all of it. In photographs taken then I am often captured reading the paper and I don’t think it was just because my father was a journalist. The late sixties and early seventies was a period of political awareness the like of which we may never see again. Both the US and the UK have undergone massive political changes since then. I think the devastating legacy of both the Reagan and the Thatcher years was the destruction of a social conscience. They ushered in the era of the ego and the single-minded pursuit of self-achievement. We went from the ideals of John F Kennedy, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country,’ to Margaret Thatcher categorically stating, ‘There is no such thing as society.’
Fitting in with American society back then seemed easy for the whole family. We moved often during our time in New York but the first property Dad rented was right on Mamaroneck Harbor. It had a long gangway to a small dock. Those were long hot summers where we ran about in our swimsuits all day; where we lived in and out of each other’s houses and sat on the dock counting the blasts from the volunteer fire department whistle to see if a fire was close enough to take our bikes to. It seemed an innocent place to me. Our neighbours were a mix of Red Cross helpers and volunteer firemen. Either blue-collar workers in boat salvage or white-collar workers who went into the city every day. Everyone had a family, a mom and a dad, and getting divorced was still a rather shocking occurrence. Being foreign and from Europe, we were far and away the most unusual people on the block. Now, in the new millennium, there had been subtle changes.
Richard and I stopped at the main shopping street, Mamaroneck Avenue. We parked for twenty-five cents, which is what a slice of pizza at Sal’s Pizzeria had cost when I lived there. On this street my parents’ friend Sid Albert had owned the coolest shop in town. Sight and Sound sold melted coke bottles, posters of The Desiderata and records. Sid had shocked the good burghers of the Mamaroneck Chamber of Commerce by not only being a successful black man but by marrying a very white Danish woman called Lisbet.
The church was tiny and looked like an ordinary brownstone house from the outside. Inside, it was small and plain with an elaborate model sailing ship suspended from the ceiling as the only decoration. I don’t know how many seamen from Denmark took regular refuge there but it was a small corner of New York that they could call home. Despite having no religion himself, Dad was pleased I was doing such a traditionally Danish thing. For weeks he had driven me up for my confirmation instruction at the church with Pastor Madsen. The day of the ceremony, the other Gladyses headed for the church along with Sid and Lisbet from the Sight and Sound store, the Danish ambassador and his wife and various other people who had been invited. The only other person taking a vow of adulthood was a young man, also thirteen. He wore a traditional dark suit and bow tie. When the moment came we walked up the aisle together as Pastor Madsen conducted the service in Danish.
The pastor wore Danish clerical robes that consisted of a long, black vestment and a fluted white collar which stuck out round his neck like a ruff to prevent injured dogs licking themselves. The boy and I knelt before him as more Danish was spoken.
‘What the hell is this?’ I could hear various Gladyses whispering. ‘Are they getting married?’
Gladys Reunited Page 7